Is there reason to hope?

In their website, it was with this quote from Australian novelist Tim Winton that the scholars of HopeLab@DLSU introduced their work:

“There is an assumption that hope is a feeling, but I see it as a discipline… If there is anything in this world that you love, hope is required… To change the conditions that you’re faced with… so that hope is plausible, that is your responsibility… even if you are not feeling emotionally hopeful…”

The passage encompasses the unique task that the researchers set up for themselves:

to inquire into hope as a measurable construct that can be elicited for the purpose of promoting overall psychological well-being, including academic functioning, achievement, etc.

Hope and well-being

HopeLab researchers position hope as a character strength and a resiliency factor. They have aligned their hope-focused research goals with the UNDP’s Sustainable Development Goal of “health and well-being for all.” This provides greater impetus to focus on preventive and positive psychological approaches to address questions on mental health.

Looking into the consequences of hope on well-being and other positive outcomes has

led to collaborations with social scientists from various local and international organizations. Recently, it was with Pampanga-based non- government organization Liferisks, which needed help on developing a free online mental health assessment website that will be used to screen Filipinos who might be at risk for psychological disorders. Liferisks tapped University Fellow

and HopeLab Director Dr. Allan B.I. Bernardo who is doing pioneering work on locus-of-hope or hope-related thoughts. Out of an existing set of tests that measures hope as a trait-like concept, Bernardo developed for Liferisks a short state version of the scale or temporal version in English and Filipino. This is supposed to make it easy for Liferisks to administer the test online, while aiming to still have good psychometric properties.

Lasting 10-15 minutes, the test contains a set of questions that will assess sleep quality, well-being, social support, social media use, and anxieties and hopes while being quarantined at home.

There is also a designated questionnaire for frontliners and other medical workers that seeks to keep in mind possible post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in light of their work in the field.

In a similar project, Bernardo is collaborating with The Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangdong, China, which is also studying the role of locus-of-hope in the well-being of medical health workers during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Locus-of-Hope

Bernardo’s locus-of-hope model extends the Hope Theory of Charles R. Snyder (1994), and takes into account more culturally diverse constructions of agency in hopeful thinking.

The model assumes that hope involves positive thoughts related to one’s ability, determination, and strategies in achieving important life goals. It also assumes that agency in goal pursuit involves both internal or personal agency, as well as external or shared agency with one’s family, peers, and spiritual or supernatural forces.

As such, the locus-of-hope model defines four dimensions of hope: internal, external- family, external-peer, and external-spiritual loci-of-hope. These are all typically measured using the 40-item scale.

Research on locus-of-hope has revealed positive outcomes of internal and external locus-of-hope dimensions in students, young adolescents, women victims of intimate partner violence, migrant workers, low-skilled workers among other populations in various Asian and North American samples.

Culturally appropriate assessments and interventions

The locus-of-hope model and other research projects by HopeLab scientists have led

to culturally appropriate psychological assessments and interventions that have proven especially useful to Filipinos.

These include the translation of depression, anxiety, and stress scales into Filipino, Cebuano, Ilocano, Kapampangan, and Ilonggo (funded by NAST/DOST) and developing hope-building efforts based on locus-of-hope theory that aim to provide low intensity psychological interventions for the mental well-being of local senior high school and university students and teachers.

Future phases of such projects may include mobile phone apps and Internet-based versions to widen their reach.

Far-reaching implications

As part of their objective to contextualize positive psychological concepts and interventions in the Philippine and Asian setting, HopeLab has produced numerous publications about

the well-being of Filipino students, OFWs, and low-skilled Filipino workers. It also has research projects involving participants from Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau, and China.

The extensive output of HopeLab members now range from studies on the well-being

of migrant workers to effects of financial stress on students to surveys of character strengths of Filipinos to locus-of-hope among victims of domestic violence.

The implications are far-reaching and not only for the academic pursuit of understanding the cultural dimensions of psychological strengths, or an individual’s psychological well-being. Research has unleashed the power of hope as a catalyst, a tool to change lives, by showing a scientific means toward achieving self-improvement, resilience, and personal empowerment.

For more information about HopeLab@DLSU,

please visit https://allanbibernardo.wixsite.com/hope-lab-at-dlsu